Open AccessImproved BAQ algorithm for Tiangong‐2 interferometric imaging radar data compression
Author(s) -
Shi Xiaojin,
Zhang Yunhua,
Dong Xiao
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the journal of engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2051-3305
DOI - 10.1049/joe.2019.0140
Subject(s) - altimeter , remote sensing , computer science , interferometry , block (permutation group theory) , radar , raw data , radar imaging , synthetic aperture radar , radar altimeter , algorithm , geology , telecommunications , optics , mathematics , physics , geometry , programming language
Tiangong‐2 interferometric imaging radar altimeter (InIRA), the first space‐borne radar altimeter in the world, applying a new mechanism of interferometry with short baseline and small incident angle, can achieve wide swath and high accuracy sea surface height measuring. Comparing to traditional altimeter, InIRA can obtain SAR image of observation area, which means InIRA needs higher AD sampling rate. Due to the limitation of satellite on‐board storage and downlink speed, in order to extend the working time of InIRA, data compression algorithm for InIRA must be studied. Block adaptive quantisation (BAQ) is an efficient and widely adopted approach for space‐borne SAR raw data compression. Based on the characters of InIRA echo waveform, this study discusses compressing InIRA raw data by changing quantisation bits and size of blocks of BAQ algorithm to achieve higher compression ratio and less sea surface height error.